Mick Schumacher reveals ‘priority’ as F1 2025 dream dealt double blow

Mick Schumacher is not giving up on a Formula 1 comeback, adamant that until everything is “completely closed”, his focus is on that.

Although Schumacher has often spoken of his desire to return to Formula 1 having spent two seasons on the grid with Haas, it looks as if the German will once again miss out in the 2025 championship.

Double blow for Mick Schumacher as Alpine and Merc pencil in favourites

Joining Mercedes as a reserve driver when his time with Haas ended abruptly at the end of the 2022 season, Schumacher extended his Formula 1 ties when he signed with Alpine as part of their World Endurance Championship team.

Those links meant the German put in the laps in a Mercedes and an Alpine F1 car as part of the teams’ Testing of Previous Car (TPC) programmes, his most recent F1 outing being in the Alpine.

The 25-year-old and Alpine’s reserve driver Jack Doohan ran at the Paul Ricard circuit in July, after which Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said he was told Alpine were “super happy” with Schumacher who “really delivered” .

But according to F1’s rumour mill, it’s Doohan who will get the Alpine race seat alongside Pierre Gasly, while the Mercedes door is also shut with Wolff saying his “first” option is Kimi Antonelli as George Russell’s 2025 team-mate.

However, Schumacher says as long as no official announcements have been made, he’ll “wait and focus” on a potential F1 return.

“We’ll have to wait and see,” he told Divebomb . “I think obviously everything is very open in Formula One at the moment.

“There is still essentially three or four teams that have seats available and uncontracted seats.

“Now, saying that, a lot of teams don’t have the pressure to make a decision right now, which also leaves me a bit in the air of course for that, but of course Formula One will always have priority in everything that I do, so as long as that’s not completely closed for me, I will wait and focus on that.”

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Another season in the World Endurance Championship?

Schumacher, who has been racing for Alpine in their first season in WEC, believes it is a good option for any driver who cannot find a place on the Formula 1 grid.

“I mean, I do hear a lot of people are interested in WEC, a lot of the drivers who don’t get a shot at Formula One or are on the way out of Formula One,” he said.

“I think that WEC has become a very valid second option next to Formula One, I have enjoyed my time here, but for me there is nothing better than Formula One, so my constant thoughts are about Formula One and that’s what I really want to do.

“Obviously when I’m here at a race weekend, I’m here to work in WEC and that’s obviously what I focus on, but definitely my ultimate goal is to be back in a Formula One car.”

But whether he’ll once again dovetail that with F1 testing commitments, as he also put in the laps for McLaren this season, remains to be seen, as he admits it’s “not quite easy” to jump from a WEC car to Formula 1 machinery. And then there are the time constraints.

“I’m still trying to get used to it, to be honest,” he said. “It’s obviously not quite easy to always do that, but overall I felt like I’ve kind of been able to manage the switch between the two.

“Basically, the two cars are so different in some ways, that actually it makes it easier to shift from one side to another, and I am doing quite a lot of testing still with F1.

“I recently just sat in the McLaren and also obviously in the Alpine at Paul Ricard, so I feel like I have been able to really handle it quite well, going from one series to another, but it is definitely challenging when I’m here to kind of work with the weight that we have, and obviously the (Alpine Hypercar) project is quite young still which makes some of the tools a bit analogue if that makes sense, not quite as fluid as we would like it to be yet.

“We are still in the development phase I would say and I think it will take the whole year until we really get to a decent spot, and I think that’s just down to the nature of the project for one, and the series/championship, but you can really feel that with every day that we work on this car, we are getting better and better, so there is definitely an upwards trend.”

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